In recent years, the greenhouse effect due to CO2 is indicated as one of causes of the global warming phenomenon, and the countermeasures thereof become an internationally urgent matter to protect the global environment. CO2 generation sources reach all human activity fields in which fossil fuels are burned, and there is a tendency to further strengthen the demand for suppression of the discharge thereof. For this, for a power generation facility such as a thermal power plant that uses a large amount of fossil fuels, a method of bringing combustion flue gas of an industrial facility such as a boiler or a gas turbine into contact with an amine-based CO2 absorption liquid to reduce and recover CO2 from the combustion flue gas and an air pollution control system which stores the recovered CO2 without emission to air has been energetically researched.
CO2 recovery equipment which has, as the process of reducing and recovering CO2 from the combustion flue gas using a CO2 absorption liquid as described above, a process of bringing the combustion flue gas into contact with the CO2 absorption liquid in a CO2 absorber (hereinafter, also simply referred to as “absorber”), and a process of heating the CO2 absorption liquid that absorbs CO2 in an absorption liquid regenerator (hereinafter, also simply referred to as “regenerator”) to emit CO2 and regenerate the CO2 absorption liquid so as to be circulated through the CO2 absorber to be reused, is proposed (for example, Patent Literature 1).
In the CO2 absorber, through countercurrent contact using an amine-based CO2 absorption liquid such as alkanolamine, CO2 in the flue gas is absorbed by the CO2 absorption liquid in a chemical reaction (exothermic reaction), and the flue gas from which CO2 is reduced is emitted to the outside of the system. The CO2 absorption liquid that absorbs CO2 is also called a “rich solution”. The rich solution is pressurized by a pump, is heated in a heat exchanger by a high-temperature CO2 absorption liquid (lean solution) regenerated as CO2 is emitted in the regenerator, and is supplied to the regenerator.